The Silvermoon

1978

The television adaptation of the 1954 play Silfurtúnglið by Hrafn Gunnlaugsson updates the interwar story of Lóa, a housewife with a beautiful singing voice who delights in serenading her newborn son. Discovered by the dubious Feilan, manager of the nightclub “Silver Moon,” she’s cast as his emblem of purity for the club’s jaded clientele, only to find her talent erased and her performances reduced to humiliation. In the same production, Gunnlaugsson also modernizes Lilja’s 1933 short story “Fótatak manna,” relocating its 1920s setting to the present: medical students exhume the body of a poor, friendless man in the name of science, callously stuffing his coffin with rocks.